Paper Tiber

How Pope John Paul’s Critics Would Tame the Church of Rome

by David Mills

Perhaps the most interesting of the responses to the death of John Paul II
were those of critics who used his death to offer their vision for the Catholic
Church, and by extension for Christianity in general. It may be useful to look
at what they said, because they followed a pattern used whenever a major orthodox
religious figure needs taking down a peg.

The treatment of Pope John Paul II is especially revealing because he was
so important and substantial that his critics—the more thoughtful ones—could
not dismiss him with the contempt they show for American “fundamentalists.” The
critic must work at bringing him down.

Two articles published in the English newspaper The Daily Telegraph offer
good examples, partly because it is politically the most conservative of the
major English newspapers (it has run pro-life editorials, for example). The
editors chose two learned critics: Ferdinand Mount, former editor of The
Times Literary Supplement, and Geza Vermes, Professor Emeritus of Jewish
Studies at the University of Oxford.

Mount describes himself as “only an occasional churchgoer” in
the Church of England. Vermes is, though the article does not tell you this,
a former Catholic priest who had renounced his orders and then his church.
Though they are only on the fringe of the Christian religion, they are not
secularists.

And are therefore the more effective critics. The average reader will assume
the purely secular writer to be arguing a case, but think the somewhat religious
writer to be in general sympathy with the thing he is attacking. He may in
fact be even more hostile to orthodox Christianity than the secularist, because
he cares more about it and wants it to be something else, but the naive reader
(and most readers will be naive) will read him as a friend of Christianity.

John Paul’s Failure

The critics work from a mind or a worldview that may not be entirely clear
even to them. Here are three of the assumptions that seem to support their
case against the traditional Christian like John Paul II.

Sex is the test. As you would expect, John Paul II failed mainly
in not approving the theory and practice of modern sexuality. Remove the sex
and gender issues and Mount would have no article, while Vermes would have
a very short one. Did Christianity not insist on chastity as a public good,
no such critic would bother with it.

To the secular and semi-secular mind, sex is something we cannot control.
The church’s teaching is impossible to follow, at least for man in the
mass, and therefore needs to be abandoned. Abstinence, writes Mount, “as
recommended by the Church, is a good thing, too, but is it any more likely
to work in the long run than the rhythm method?” The answer he wants
is, “Of course not, so let’s hand out the condoms so people won’t
get pregnant or AIDS.”

Moral liberalism is self-evidently good. Both writers proceed with
the force of assurance, as if there were no doubt about the matter. No traditional
Catholic teaching is ever engaged, because engagement would imply that it might
be true, or at least not as completely untrue as the critic thinks.

Mount begins his article with four recent social changes he thinks “unequivocally
good in their effects,” which the reactionary, outdated Catholic Church
still opposes. In China and India, “runaway population growth was stabilised
by encouraging contraception, abortion and sterilisation on a massive scale,” though
he concedes that these were done “often by pretty unpleasant methods.” The
result, in combination with a freer economy, is that “the lives of billions
in both countries, which had been poor, nasty and short throughout recorded
history, are now brimming with hope.” Abortion, in other words, helps
make people happy, and we should all know that, and knowing that, approve of
it.

The three other changes are the acceptance of homosexuality, the need for
condoms to stop AIDS, and the access of women to every position, including
ordination in the Protestant churches. All, you see, having to do with sex
and all asserted as if there were no reasonable alternative.

Both writers, in fact, assume that what they are saying is not only obvious,
but is really obvious even to the people they oppose. Vermes claims that “a
look at the New Testament produces a picture that even they [conservative ‘Church
dignitaries] must find disturbing.” Mount insists that “the papacy
of John Paul II, splendid in so many other ways, turned away its face and opposed
every one of these changes”: turned away, notice, meaning that he refused
to see what was clearly there to be seen.

The church suffers from remaining what it was. Both writers assume
that the Catholic Church is suffering in the West—they never mention
the rest of the world—because its leaders hold to outdated doctrines
and practices, and assume that the only hope for it is to modernize. Though
people want something the church offers (what that is they never say), they
do not want all the old doctrines and, even more to the point, all the old
morals.

Critical Techniques

Beginning with these assumptions, the critics use several techniques to make
their case. Here are some of them.

The undermining compliment. Both Vermes and Mount praise John Paul
as a man (sort of), though the effect of their criticism is to insult him as
a pope. His virtues as they describe them are personal and private, his faults
also personal but public, their final judgment being in effect, “A good
man but not fit for the job.” Mount praises his courage in resisting
illness but insists, in the thesis sentence of the article, that he turned
away from the truth, which is to say, that however bravely he faced illness,
he failed to show courage at the crucial point of his ministry.

The myth of the repression of the heroes. John Paul, it is said,
oppressed those who would have shown Catholicism the way to future success.
Vermes writes of “the chains placed on” those he thinks “highly
competent Catholic scripture interpreters and theologians,” which is
news to anyone who has read the Catholic Biblical Quarterly or looked
at the names of the biblical faculties in the average Catholic college.

The myth of the better self betrayed. Associated with this is the
idea that John Paul II started out as a liberal or “moderate” and
for one reason or another declined into conservatism. Mount likens him to the “inferior” Pope
Pius IX (Pio Nono), who “took fright at the world’s disorder and
abandoned the liberal ideas of his youth, to become known to his critics as
Pio No-No.” Vermes does this to then-cardinal Ratzinger as well.

I have yet to see those who insist on this reading of the pope produce any
evidence for a substantial contradiction between the pope’s early works
and his latest. The explanation, I think, is that they identified the Polish
cardinal with a “spirit of Vatican II” entirely of their own invention
and found to their horror that as pope he taught what the Second Vatican Council
actually said.

History betrayed. Then there are the false historical claims produced
with such confidence that the unwary might well believe them, which seem to
show that the modern conservative has actually betrayed the Christian tradition,
and that the innovators are the ones truly loyal to the Christian tradition.

Mount asks, “Why is it so unthinkable that women should be advanced
at least to the rank of deaconess, as they were in the early Church?” (He
must mean female deacon, since no one objects to deaconesses, who are not ordained.)
The problem, of course, is that women were not made deacons in the early Church.

The distorted doctrine. These critics often exaggerate or otherwise
misrepresent Christian doctrine in a way that makes it look foolish or inconsistent
to the point of hypocrisy. Mount declares the Western discipline of clerical
celibacy “an eternal principle that priests should be celibate.” It
may be a good discipline or a bad one, but no one has ever asserted it as “an
eternal principle.” This exaggeration lets the writer knock down his
subject’s belief in a way that makes him look ridiculously simple-minded.

As Mount proceeds to do. “Former Anglican clergy who go over to Rome
are allowed to keep their wives and in the Eastern Church men have always been
permitted to marry before, though not after, ordination,” he says. An
eternal principle that the pope ignores: what inconsistency, and more to the
point, evidence that it ought to be abandoned. Vermes makes the same argument.

Slanders & Confusions

The “gotcha” arguments. Both writers depend upon claims
that are indeed true and seem conclusive if you do not know anything about
the subject, though they have reasonable answers. They do not argue these points,
though surely they must know how dubious they are. They assert them as if they
were final and conclusive and beyond question.

Vermes throws them out with abandon: “Homosexuality no doubt existed
in ancient Palestinian society, but it was not prominent and was never directly
mentioned by Jesus”; “There is not one word in the gospels to disqualify
women from the priesthood”; “In his outlook of an impending arrival
of God’s reign, Jesus seems to have opposed divorce as an inappropriate
move when so little time remained”; the synoptic gospels don’t
use the word “Church”; and so on. Mount does this only once, when
he notes, apparently in support of abortion, that the church once argued that
a fetus was “ensouled” forty days after conception. These all have
answers, but Mount and Vermes write as if they do not.

The argument the writer doesn’t actually accept. Mount argues
for approving homosexuality because, since orientation is “genetically
transmitted . . . it would be cruel and unreasonable to expect them either
to change their natures or to abstain from sexual expression of their affections.” The
argument is: One gets the inclination to act in a certain way from his genes;
therefore, he should be able to act that way. Mount surely does not accept
that someone genetically disposed to alcoholism should drink too much, and
would reject the same argument made for a whole range of behaviors were they
found to be genetic in origin. (Never mind how dubious is the claim in the
first place.)

The unnamed villains. The failures of the old order are often demonstrated
by the sins of people the critic does not identify. See the preceding item
for an example.

Insist that doctrine causes suffering. Whenever possible, the critics
insist that traditional doctrine affects the real world, and affects it badly.
That opposing homosexuality is “cruel” is one of the most popular
examples. In Africa, Mount declares, the church’s resistance to the use
of condoms “is producing a death toll that threatens to rival that of
a third world war.” (Vermes mentions this one as well.)

And finally, simple confusion. Sometimes the critics offer criticisms
that have no actual content, but will be taken by the quick or casual reader
as added evidence against the subject. Vermes declares that “regarding
the situation of the millions of AIDS victims, on past performance one can
be sure Jesus would have shown to these latter-day ‘lepers’ his
customary compassion and given them a helping hand.”

This has no more meaning in context than it does here. The reader is meant
to take this as a criticism of Catholicism, in fact as evidence that it is
not “based on the gospel,” but does Vermes really think John Paul
II or any orthodox Catholic would disagree?

Different Minds

To a great extent, of course, the articles represent a profound difference
of mind or worldview from the Catholic one. The pope’s Catholicism seems
so irrational and irresponsible to Mount and Vermes because they do not see
what vision it offers of human life and destiny.

When Mount argues that the rhythm method does not work, he means that couples
sometimes had children they did not want and could not have sex whenever they
wanted it, which he must think self-evidently bad. But to the traditional Christian
mind, a marriage open to children, and the full self-giving of each spouse
to the other in sexual intercourse that it requires, is a marriage that works
because it is a marriage doing what marriage is given us to do. The “bonus
baby” is a gift, not a burden.

The two visions differ radically, and I can understand a critical writer
rejecting the Christian vision, but he should understand what he is criticizing
before he rejects it, and this neither Mount nor Vermes seems to do. They argue,
as I said, with the force of assurance, which any attempt to engage Catholic
teaching would undermine.

That said, there is one significant difference in the writers. Though Mount
appeals to the Christian tradition, or his version of it, but generally judges
John Paul II by secular standards, Vermes actually argues against the pope’s
Catholicism by appealing to “the gospel” and the “one sure
criterion—the teaching of Jesus.” Near the end of the article,
he calls for “revitalizing” Catholicism through “the authentic
gospel of Jesus.”

The “authentic gospel” is not “the doctrine about
Jesus developed by St. Paul and two millennia of Christianity,” but “a
simple and moving message” about

God, the heavenly Father, the dignity of all human beings as children of
God, a life turned into worship by total trust, an overwhelming sense of
urgency to do one’s duty without delaying tactics, a sanctification
of the here and now, and, yes, the love of God through the love of one’s
neighbour.

This makes Vermes the more effective critic because he is in his religiousness
closer to his subject.

Both writers predict that the Catholic Church will die unless it does what
he wants, but the question one naturally asks of the visions of skeptics like
Mount and Vermes is what their revised church would look like, and what would
it do? Is there really a point to it? Would anyone get up on Sunday morning
were this what the Catholic Church offered?

Critical Dreams

Mount does not say what his ideal Catholic Church would look like. All he
says is that the questions he has raised “will have to be addressed,” by
which he clearly means “answered the way I want.” If they are not, “the
pews and the seminaries will go on emptying, and those who remain in the Church
will become even more detached from its teaching.” The Catholic Church
should “become an ally and pathfinder,” he says, but whose ally
and what paths it should find he does not say.

Vermes’s dream Catholicism expresses his “authentic gospel” and
presumably approves of homosexuality, women’s ordination, and contraception.
It is now “concealed under verbiage about sex, rituals, mass canonisation
of saints and Mary worship,” but if freed from this—he means Catholicism
as it exists, not to put too fine a point on it—it “would concentrate
on the true essence of religion, an existential relationship between man and
man, and man and God.” This religion, vague as it is, would appeal to “thinking
people all over the world.”

This is the point, I think, at which all such sweeping visions for a new
Catholicism, or a new Christianity, break down. Even if you accept the critics’ critique
of the old religion, you really won’t want the new one. Mount doesn’t
seem to want it, and Vermes does not suggest that he would return to the church
were it the church he wants.

In the Catholic Church of Mount’s and Vermes’s dreams, there’s
no there there, as Gertrude Stein famously said of Peoria. The Catholicism
proposed by Mount and Vermes has no future because it offers so little—nothing
not available elsewhere to men and women in the affluent West and available
to them without the costs that even a new, minimal Catholicism would impose.

The average American and European can get a simple and moving message from
television, and he will always feel that he has done his duty as soon as he
could, that he has always treated others with dignity, and that he loves his
neighbor. He does not have to be a Catholic to have what Vermes offers him.

One wonders if, for all the critics’ concern for the future of the
Catholic Church, this is what they really want: a church conformed to their
ideals now, when its cultural and intellectual influence can still be used
to advance their goals, even though, because it has conformed to their ideals,
it will shortly die out. A worldly Catholicism cannot compete with the world.
The world has all the advantages in being worldly.

David Mills , former editor of Touchstone and executive editor of First Things, is a senior editor of The Stream and columnist for several Catholic publications. His last book is Discovering Mary. He and his family attend St. Joseph's Church in Corapolis, PA.

“Paper Tiber” first appeared in the June 2005 issue of Touchstone. If you enjoyed this article, you'll find more of the same in every issue.

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